Away 33 The Motion PictureWe're adding narration to the existing videos. It's a description of what you're seeing.

Dark Sky Station 2 Floating on the Edge
Ascender
90 Dark Sky Station 1 Launch
Flying with the Sons of the San Joaquin

Music video featuring the Sons of the San Joaquin, the official sponsors of space education and scenes
from the Away 29 and 30 missions.
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missions!

A Very Fast Rocket

This was a test of the eight foot spaceflight rocket. The launch box is hanging from a pole
instead of balloon for this one. This rocket really moves!

Space Vacuum inside the Ascender

This is just a fun clip we found. Last year when Space Vacuum was filming their rock video inside the Ascender
we were taking some still pics. Apparently the camera was put into video mode for 14 secs.

These
are the voyages...

Dark Sky Station Two liftoff, Docking at the Dark Sky Station.
The Missions
Rocket launched from a balloon
from the on-board camera.

The great
folks at SuperNova Digital Productions sent us this preview of a JPA
documentary they've been
thinking about. This clip is focused on the Away 26
mission. It
shows a lot of ground action and really makes us look good. Ah, the
power
of video...

Airship
Propeller Test

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Away 27,
The Hop

Away 27 on board video. We had a bad
bounce on launch
and had
to abort the flight at 20,000
feet. The
bounce and descent were all caught
by
the camcorder on the vehicle.June 3rd 2006.

Lift Off from the Business End

Did you know that rocket motors whistle? At least solid
propellant ones do. When the motor pressurizes
the air being forced out the nozzle makes a low to high pitch whistle.
The reason you never hear this is that
you don't normally put your head under the rocket when it's firing.
Rather then our heads we put a video
camera under the rocket instead.
The camera was blasted away by the pressure wave before
the motor
got going. The camera was fine, but the video was cut short.
It's still very cool....

The rocket is the JPA MicroSat Launcher Block 2, firing a 14,000 n/s
motor and flying to 20,000 feet.

PongSat News Story

Dale Schornack ABC News
10 has been covering JPA and making us look good for
years. Here's a story he's
reciently did
about the PongSat program. Can you see your
PongSat in the piece?

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Flying Contraptions
Platform experiments in the parking lot.

While developing high altitude
platforms we have created some pretty strange flying machines.
Common to all of them is
they flew in the parking lot before heading to the edge of space. This
video shows three very
different types of platforms.

There and
Back Again

The Ring

A
study of building low cost aerospace parts. This big carbon ring
is for our new airship. The video shows 104 scenes from the
making of
the ring flashing by in 40 seconds. You see the ring
assemble
itself
and emerge before your eyes.

This three minute and fifty second
video shows scenes from
nearly all
eighty-six mission flown by JPA. Set to the sounds of the
Dark
Sky Station
house band, Space
Vacuum.

Away 26

Away 26 high altitude balloon mission flown on May 21, 2005.
This clip shows the launch then switches to the on board
camera.
This flight carried airship components, research samples,
202 PongSats and Stars Wars action figures.

Airship Factory

A day in the life of an airship factory, or at least two minutes and
forty seconds of one.
This is a 'walk around' of the 175 foot Ascender from January
2004. That day we
worked on inflation, float and a propeller spin up test.

Dark Sky
Station

On May 19, 2001 a small scale prototype Dark Sky Station took to the
sky.
You can see here the scale of the operation even for a small
platform. This DSS
is 27 feet across. During a launch we had to hold for two
hours
for high winds. When
we reattached the balloon an inner and an outer balloon got
switched. The result was the
platform climbed at a small angle. Can you guess which
balloon is
in the wrong spot
from the above picture?

Rockets!

In addition to launching rockets from
balloons as part of a high altitude launch
system, JPA uses rockets as a research tool for Airship to
Orbit.
Here is a small
sample of launches we've conducted. Most of those in the
video
are ground launches
from suspended gondolas or from gimbaled launch rails.

The FallWhat
is it like to fall from the edge of space? Here is
a camcorders
view of that drop. Video is from the Away 17
mission flown
in 2002.

The Approach

This fantastic animation was create by
Home Baked Entertainment.
It shows an orbital Ascender approaching the Dark Sky Station.

Away 25

Away 25 launch and on board video.
This mission was flown on April 4th 2004.

Away 22

Away 22 high altitude propeller test flight. The video is a
little grainy. The recording video
cameras were stolen before the recovery crew got to the
vehicle.
You can still see the
propeller spinning and driving the vehicle around. Away 22
lifted
off on May 21, 2003

Inflation

Inflation test. This balloon will be deployed from a rocket
as
part of Mach glider development.
see January 2005 log page for details.

Texas
Liftoff

MicroSat Launcher lifting off from the
West Texas Spaceport.
Liftoff was on April 17, 2004, only a couple of weeks after the
Away 25 mission. It was a very busy April!